Sept. 27-Oct. 3, 2020

Weather | 9/27, 64°, 73° | 9/28, 0.51" rain yesterday & overnight, 46°, 61° | 9/29, 0.01" rain, 47°, 61° | 9/30, 51°, 68° | 10/1, 43°, 57° | 10/2, 37°, 59° | 10/3, 0.13" rain, 43°, 53° |

• Sunday, 9/27: Activities:
  • Mary moved the garlic and 2 pumpkins from the back porch closet to the upstairs south bedroom.
  • She then raked up recently mowed grass, picked a half bucket of tomatoes from the garden, and froze 3 more gallons of ripe tomatoes.
  • I cleaned the inside of the Cadillac, where lime, sand, and concrete dust leaked out from paper bags. The pickup bed would be a better transportation device.
  • I checked the 7-prong trailer plug-in on the pickup. It tests out fine, but the hanger attaching it to the rear bumper is rusted, so I wired the plug-in to the bumper, thereby transforming the pickup to a true baling wire farm truck. I also changed the pickup's air filter right when it started raining.
  • We had bacon, shallots, tomatoes, and eggs for our main meal.
  • I reviewed applying flashing to a chimney that has one side right at the peak of the roof, like our chimney is built. From several photos, I figured out what I need to do.
    
  • I used Messenger with Katie to find out she's flying south out of northern Alaska tomorrow to take in 2 months of Air Force Guard monthly stuff that she does (can't remember the lingo).
    


• Monday, 9/28: We did:
  
  • Mary finished cleaning the upstairs south bedroom.
  • It was rainy outside, so I was inside researching methods of laying brick and building chimney flashing.
    
  • I looked for bricklaying tools, found several that once belonged to Mary's Uncle Herman, and cleaned up several of them with an electric wire brush.
    


• Tuesday, 9/29: Events:
  
  • I drove the pickup to Quincy, got the manlift, and towed it home (see photo below). While in Quincy, I also bought chick & hen food, plus other items I need for fixing the chimney.
    
  • Once home, I hooked the tractor to the manlift and backed it into place on the west side of the house. It took a lot of time to do this, since the 1950 8N Ford tractor is a piddly thing with as much power as a chicken scratching dirt.
    
  • Mary froze the last of the corn, picked and froze more tomatoes, and made a 3-day supply of tortellini soup.

  

  The towable manlift behind our pickup.

  
  
• Wednesday, 9/30: Today we did:
  • I figured out how to operate the manlift. After getting it running, I went up to the roof and right away decided that the manlift wasn't close enough to the house, so I spent an hour putting chains on the tractor. Then, Mary helped me as we worked to back it further to the house.
  • I went up on the manlift a second time and determined that the chimney exposed to the outside was really shot, with bricks that were wobbly and about ready to fall. I still wasn't as close as I wanted to be, so I decided I would run to Quincy and get brackets, so I could place a plank to stand on nearer to the chimney. I made one piece of flashing, and determined I needed more flashing material. I went to Quincy as the moon was rising, bought brackets, more flashing, and gas for running the manlift and the tractor.
    
  • Mary made Mississippi mud, an intensely chocolate dessert, did some cleaning, picked more tomatoes, and harvested the 6 hills of sweet potatoes (see photo below).

  

  This year's sweet potatoes from just 6 hills.

  
  
• Thursday, 10/1: Work today involved:
  
  • I took off extremely loose bricks that were just about ready to fall from the chimney. Then, I nailed 2 brackets to the roof and nailed a 5' long 2x10 to the brackets. After that, I detached and removed chimney bricks down to close to the roof. Next, I removed piles of dried up tar, aluminum flashing, and shingles around the chimney. Uncle Herman's roofing job included vast amounts of nails, both into the shingles and into bricks of the chimney, which cracked the bricks. At one point, there were 5 nails that I removed from a 1" square area! I cleaned up the worksite, then washed up 15 bricks, of which I have many, many more to do. Below are photos that Mary took of me on the roof.
    
  • They are predicting frost for Sunday night, so Mary was busy getting garden items. She harvested and hung a bunch of comfrey. She picked 2 buckets of sweet peppers and a bucket of hot peppers. She froze most of the hot peppers and strung up and hung the ripe hot peppers to dry. She picked 7 pumpkins, 24 acorn squash, and 4.5 buckets of tomatoes. The upstairs south bedroom is loaded with garden produce.

Removing bricks from the chimney.

Leaving roof with a load of bricks.

Up in the sky.

Old bricks from the chimney.

• Friday, 10/2: Why is it that every project takes so much longer to accomplish than the time I figure it will take? And, I don't seem to get better at estimating time allocations with age. I'm nearly halfway through my rental of a lift and I'm no way near halfway through my chimney project, let alone getting another roof issue, a leaky roof where an old gas heater exhaust pipe exists. The other problem is the "Persnickety Dicky Syndrome," when I have to get everything "just so." I'm afraid I inherited that from my grandfather, Willis G. Melvin. He was the ultimate in being precise.
  
  Happenings today:
  
  • I took a few more loose and split bricks off the chimney. It's down to 3 bricks high on low side of the roof and a brick or 2 below the roof peak on the high side of the roof. Then, I used a mortar chisel and hammer and ever so lightly tapped at old mortar and stucco to remove it from remaining bricks. Most of the 100-year old mortar is impregnated with black soot, but it's twice as strong as the stucco that was put on by Mary's Uncle Herman. Still, Herman's stucco job helped fill recesses in the original mortar job.
  • Mary made flour tortillas and chimichangas for our midday meal.
    
  • In between 2 loads of laundry, Mary scrubbed bricks all day...a total of 82 bricks. That was a lot of work for her.
  • I decided to call the rental place and reserved the lift for another week, just in case I don't finish by next Tuesday at 1:30 pm, when the week's rental is due. 
  • I carefully removed more asphalt shingles to a point where I can put new ones back into place. In several places, I carefully cut them, making sure cuts will be overlapped by new shingles. While doing this, I noticed how warm it felt while working above old black tar paper. The temperature was only in the upper 50s, but it felt like it was above 70. I would hate to be working on a roof at 90°.
  • Next, I put stucco on the existing bricks exposed to the outside of the roof. Finally, I added tar paper to the left and right roof sides of the chimney.
  • After cleanup and chores, I went back up with a sheet of plastic, stuffing edges under shingles, tar paper, and the board I stand on, to guard against tomorrow's expected rain. I noticed a lot of warm air coming up the chimney. When I returned inside, I asked if the damper was open. "I don't know," said Mary. Then, we both looked in the living room. Of course, I took the stove pipe off the stove on Monday to remove soot at the bottom of the chimney prior to working on the chimney, and I didn't put the stove pipe back. Mary asked, "How the hell are we supposed to shut the damper?" There we stood, looking at thin air. We both laughed until our bellies hurt.
    


• Saturday, 10/3: Today:
  
  • We woke up to rain. It lightly rained until noon, then heavy mist started in at dusk. Crawling around on a 2x10 wet plank on our 45° angle roof was not an option today for me. Instead, I contemplated my next moves on the chimney project with bricks and flashing. 
  • Mary froze 3 gallons and most of a 4th gallon of tomatoes. We now have 12 gallons of tomatoes in the freezer. We also have a dump truck (not really) of green tomatoes ripening in the upstairs south bedroom. Any tomato with a tinge of ripening color is put in 2 large bowls and an ice cream bucket that Mary stores in the microwave when it's not in use. Somehow, the enclosed environment inside the microwave speeds up the ripening process. A pale green/yellow tomato ripens in about 4 days in the microwave. The same tomato on the kitchen counter might take a week to ripen, or not ripen at all. It's an amazing discovery.
  • Mary made a venison General Tso Chinese midday meal.
  • While walking down to the gravel road to get the mail, we saw a nighthawk zipping by, and then 7 wood ducks flying around looking for a place to land.
  • I took the manlift up to the chimney to take measurements and stuff plastic that blew out today into the cracks between the chimney and the roof that are open right now, since the prediction is for an 80 percent chance of rain tonight.